Name: Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: 1 head of lettuce; 2 onions; 2 tomatoes; 1 cup fresh sweet peas; 2 tablespoons peanuts; parsley; Decimayonnaise

Why it works: Lettuce and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Finely cut the lettuce, onions, and tomatoes.
Chop the fresh sweet peas and peanuts.

Serve

Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves, garnished with parsley and Decimayonnaise.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + peanuttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the leafy base that holds the mixture for serving.
Tomatoes: Add moisture and acidity, brightening the salad.
Onions: Add sharp aroma and savory bite.
Peanuts: Add crunch and a nutty flavor.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, onion, tomato, peas, parsley):

Chickpeafits better
Beansfits better
Lentilsfits better
Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, onion, tomato, peas, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.